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Here's yet another amazing Trump/Russia media failure that's been forgotten. Bear with me for a sec, because this one is truly unbelievable. Cast your mind back to Oct. 7, 2016: the day the Access Hollywood tape came out, and also when WikiLeaks started publishing Podesta emails
So it was a crazy day. Naturally, I began tweeting newsworthy excerpts from the WikiLeaks release: namely the transcripts of Hillary's Goldman Sachs speeches, which she (falsely) claimed she would "look into" releasing during the primary with Bernie, but of course never did. 
A pro-Clinton troll that I vaguely recognized replied to my tweet with what was obviously a fake screenshot. The idea, I presumed, was to sow doubt about the veracity of the leaked material. (It was all 100% authentic, as we now know.)
The troll had a track record of posting fake material on Twitter designed to undermine legitimate criticism of Hillary. So the troll would tweet wild, fact-free allegations about Hillary so as to portray her critics as deranged. He would cite as a source his "fake news" website.
The troll's tweet to me, with the fake Goldman Sachs transcript, ended up getting some traction evidently -- meaning people retweeted it. Eventually it was cited by... Malcolm Nance. MSNBC's chief "Intelligence Expert." After which Joy Reid tweeted it. Then David Frum.
They used this random troll tweet as evidence that the WikiLeaks material had been doctored or fabricated. It was a total lie. Everything published was 100% real. But this then became a meme throughout the national media. Based on nothing but a pro-Clinton troll's tweet to me.
Nance, Reid, and Frum never apologized or clarified the falsehoods they propagated. And why would they? There's no accountability in elite media. But that's not the end of the story. This next thing, which came a few weeks later, is the craziest part.
The pro-Clinton troll -- an admitted purveyor of fake news, whose mission was to spread as much disinformation as possible on the internet so he could make money -- was rewarded. With a column. In the Daily Beast. I swear to God, I'm not making this up. thedailybeast.com/ive-been-makin…
The Daily Beast decided to combat the problem of fake news and online disinformation by giving one of the absolute worst offenders column space to brag about it. Could there be a more ridiculously perverse set of incentives for a major media organization to foster?
Ultimately, this was a minor episode. (I was never contacted for comment, despite being maligned in the troll's article.) But it was one small insight into how elite US media, in the throes of Trump and Russia-induced insanity, decided to throw all their standards out the window.
